


Nocturnal Surveillance

by Yaoi_Hands



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, LGBTQ Female Character, References to Drugs, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2020-06-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:49:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24791131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yaoi_Hands/pseuds/Yaoi_Hands
Summary: Zoe's reconnaissance concerning vampires while in search of Mad.
Kudos: 8





	Nocturnal Surveillance

Nobody’s going to read this. I’m not writing it for anybody else. I guess if something happens to me and Daryl has to clean out my apartment he might find these boxes, and the Big Picture is going to make him wonder what the hell was wrong with me, but he’ll probably just chuck my shit out, paint the place, and lease it to some other hard-luck case for $50 more than he charged me a month. But then, there might not be anything to clean up, and I’m writing letters to Santa here, because if anything happens to me, I don’t think the people who do it are going to leave any of this crap to be found.

Sophie – you’ll be proud of me. I’ve been making a list before I started compiling the story and my observations and conclusions, so I won’t forget anything.

  1. Vampires are real. (I hate that word. “Vampire”. It sounds fucking lame. I remember the vampire kids from high school, and they were a bunch of fucking losers. I was a bit of an outsider, myself, and nobody said boo when I knocked one down.)
  2. Vampires are three things – they are stronger than you, they are faster than you, they are sexier than you. (I know about all three. I’m not going to talk about them right now though.)
  3. I am not crazy. (I should have made this #1 but I forgot, and if I cross anything or use whiteout, I have to start a new list or it’ll drive me nuts. I haven’t got the money to get my meds refilled, and so I just have to type very carefully.)
  4. Vampires go where the people are. (For exactly the same reason that the sharks are where the fishies are, but also for the reason that the actor is where the audience is.)
  5. Vampires try and keep it secret. (This one is obvious. I’d never heard of real vampires before I dated one. And I know it is going to get me in trouble too.)
  6. I do all this so I can find Her. (Again, obvious, but I don’t want to lose focus. It’s all about deciphering random experience – there’s always a pattern if you look close enough and dig deep enough. There was a reason I was chosen for what happened to me. A reason my OC tendencies were there, latent. There is a reason vampires exist. When I have enough observations and evidence the reason will come clear, like the way a sailboat suddenly jumps into 3-D existence amid the seeming chaos of a Magic Eye picture.)



I still keep myself in good shape. I try and focus the creeping anxiety I get now into exercise. Running the perfect mile. Breathing just right. Counting each breath. Each step. There are 1945 of my medium-paced jogging steps in a mile. When it’s raining, it takes more steps to make the mile, as I have to shorten my stride. When I run all out, it cuts the steps down a lot. In a week, I do at least seven miles at full stride, running as fast as I can. I know there’s going to be a time when I’m going to have to chase or I’m going to be chased, and I’m going to need to move. Also, there’s vanity. Before I started working on the Big Picture, I looked pretty good, and I knew it. I read all the fashion mags, and I did the abs exercises. I had all the other status objects to dress my body up, too – sharp designer suits for work, understated Rolex, Lincoln Navigator, and whatever the trends dictated I wear on weekends.

When I went out for milk, and everything changed, vintage was in, and my shirt was pale yellow with a pattern of blue concentric circles, and a wide collar. I’d paid forty-five dollars for it, and it was older than I was. It was Sunday, and I had a two-day leg stubble. In the window of the Texaco, I looked like a movie star. Inside, while grabbing a fresh gallon of cow juice from the back of the cooler (one with a later expiration date, of course), somebody else thought I looked like a movie star too. When I straightened up with the milk, she dragged her eyes up from my ass to meet mine. I don’t want to describe her here. I’ve lost the thread of it. I was talking about why I run (other than to keep the crazies down). I run so no matter how bad I have to live; I’ll still look good. This butch peacock grows her huge tail to basically say, “Hey chicky-chick, I can carry this absurd huge tail around and I’m still alive, so I must have some kickass DNA...you want me to share?” I lost my tail when I couldn’t make payments on the Navigator, and when I moved out, I just left all my stuff there. I don’t know what Sophie did with it all. I treated her bad, and I’m embarrassed about it. I don’t want to see her and have to explain anything. So, I never tried to get my stuff back. One time, I was in this bar making observations, and she came in with some of her girlfriends from work. I called them The Jennifers because at least three had that name. The rest looked like Jennifers. They were wholly interchangeable. But I had to abandon the place and ditch out when Sophie went to the can. So, all I have is my body, and I keep it looking good. I feed it as well as I can with the money I have, and I don’t hurt it with smokes or drink or drugs anymore. I know my body isn’t a temple. I’ve seen a body that is a temple, all laid out before me. I know what the Satanist types speak of when they drone about “altars of the flesh.” I’ve worshiped a body like that. My body isn’t a temple or an altar. I know precisely what my body is for. My body is a sacrifice to lay atop that altar.

**HOW TO SPOT A VAMPIRE**

It took me awhile to get the trick of it, but here’s my method. You don’t look for the vampire. Vampires are really good at looking like people because if not, they end up raping people for their blood in alleys. They like it better when people give themselves over, and create a relationship around it, and use love to excuse what the monster does to them. That’s what I did. But I guess that’s no more fucked up than imagining the stripper really cares about you when she calls you “Baby.” The trick is not to look for vampires, but to watch the crowd. Watch their faces. When there’s a vampire hunting the crowd, you’ll see people move like schools of fish – with a weird sense of unconscious coordination. Eyes will swivel momentarily to look toward the door. People with breath quicker. They’ll unconsciously meander in a certain direction. If you see this, then look to see where it’s directed. Once you have it narrowed, watch the people in that area of the room, and see which one is the center of attention. He’s your vampire.

**TEN PLACES I OBSERVED VAMPIRES**

  1. **Redline Gaming Lounge** \- I went in here to get a coke and sit down for a while, but it was serendipity. I stuck way out here, even in my generic jeans and tee. The place had dozens of gaming rigs networked for LAN play and was packed with kids and twenty-somethings blowing the fuck out of each other. The air was thick with geek aggression and power dynamics – the subordinate males chomped at the alphas constantly, savaging them and each other with railguns and plasma bombs and rocket launchers. They were hooting and preening, and when they’d frag a dude their eyes would involuntarily flit to a booth in the back where a girl was holding court. She wasn’t pretty like the girls I dated, or most of the other vampires I’d found. She had emo-kid glasses, and hair dyed this weird auburn color. She was wearing a t-shirt with some kind of logo on it, and geek-punk bracelets and shit. Even I couldn’t miss the curves under those jeans, though - and the assembled geeks sure as hell didn’t, either. She was gabbling with the boys about console games and computers and music. And she owned them. She owned the whole place. She wouldn’t have rated a 4 on my old hot-scale, but here she was an 11. Vampires find their niches.
  2. **The Anvil** – an industrial gay club. Heineken was expensive here. I got more attention than I’d had for a long time, and it felt sort of good to have other humans check me out. It made me glad I was gay, and that I still could do something with other humans who found me attractive. The vampire here was really obvious. She was hardly making an effort to keep her influence subtle – it was like a series of hammer blows in time with the bassline. I felt it myself, even way over where I hunched over my beer and exchanged shouted “WHAT?!?” with the chick on the next stool. The vampire looked good, and everybody knew it. There was an ease about her that made me think she was a regular – little nods to people she knew, and a deference from the staff. I don’t know if some vampires were gay before they became vampires, or whether afterwards they just don’t care one way or the other anymore. I saw the same vampire a few weeks later playing a straight club exactly the same way. I think it’s just a buffet to them, and the sex is like the difference between Mexican or Chinese. One place they fry the chicken and put it in orange sauce, the other it’s grilled and stuffed into a corn tortilla.
  3. **The Steel Mill** – a 24-hour health club. Busy people have to work out some time, so why not at midnight on a Sunday? I got in on one of those trial workouts. No way I could afford membership now. I figured it was a good place to look because I used to get girls’ numbers at the gym. I thought lifting would be the obvious place for them to flirt – “hey, you need a spot?”– but there were too many mirrors. I found one on the Stairmaster, working hard on an already gorgeous ass. The guy next to her thought it was pretty great too, and let her borrow his iPod. They left together. All those hormones and sweat. It was the first time I’d been in a gym since the breakdown, and the place was a shrine to the physical vanity that vampires love – flesh, engorged with blood, and minds dimmed with endorphins and fatigue.
  4. **James Sanders High School Homecoming Dance** – I helped the band set up their equipment, and then hung around pretending to roadie. I had a theory that anybody could become a vampire, and there would be teenage vampires out there, stuck at 16 forever. Since they go where the people are and where sex is bubbling just under the surface, then an after-dark High School activity would be perfect. When I saw the kid with the retro leather jacket, I know he was the one. He just cruised through the crowd of kids, and they parted before him like fog, to flow and swirl in his wake. When he took a girl into the locker rooms, I followed and made a shit-ton of noise by ‘accidentally’ kicking over a trashcan. He cut out and left her calling for him. The look he gave me when he passed scared the shit out of me. He was old. Something about his bones. His eyes had seen nations rise and fall. And he was stuck here, in a fucking high school locker room. I got the hell out of there.
  5. **Cook County Senior Center** – When I heard the stories about what my Granddad got into when Mom put him in a home, all my illusions about the elderly and sex evaporated. With the blue pill faerie to magic the flesh into willingness, the attendants couldn’t keep the codgers in their own beds anymore. This was my next leap, after realizing there might be kid vampires... there might be silver-haired senior vampires too, cruising the widow-set for hot grandmammas. It was January, and the nights had drawn in. I volunteered to help out at the place, and the annual Spaghetti Cook-off attracted a good crowd, and it was like the hormone soup of the high school dance, only in slow motion with more big band music. I spotted the vampire. The bastard was judging spaghetti sauce while shameless octogenarians flirted with him and tried to sway his judgment. I realized it was a perfect population to prey on, when the ick-factor of wrinkly sex faded. These people die all the time, and nobody says boo. Hell, with their medical conditions, and quality of life, the old vampire might be doing them a favor. His way would at least be fun for them.
  6. **Pearl's** – I stopped by because I heard people talking about how good the sweet potato pie was, and how cute this waitress was. I think I’m getting an intuition about it. Or, on some level, I’m starting to recognize the signs when a person has been under the influence of a vampire. So, I went to try the pie, and to see about this waitress. It was a kitschy sort of a place, and the pies were in a rotating rack up front. The jukebox was loaded with the hits of yesteryear, and some fan of Johnny Cash had dropped enough coin to keep him singing all night. Sure enough, she was a vampire. I never before saw so many people tip twenty bucks on a five-dollar check. She smiled and flirted and called everyone “Hon” and “Darling” and “Sugah”. She played the country girl, but there was something of Europe in her accent. Funny thing – I never saw her get a phone number or anything. She just smiled and made huge tips. If it kept on all night like that, she’d have made a grand. When I left Pearl’s, I hunkered down in my car parked across the street and watched. I couldn’t figure it out, until I saw her kissing the cook and getting into his truck around 5:00 AM. He was pale and worn thin, but he kissed her like he knew how to do it from long practice.
  7. **NARCANON** – Hello, my name is Zoe, and I’m an addict. It actually felt good to talk about it, even if I didn’t get too specific. Some of the people there looked like they had a low tolerance for bullshit. There’s always a meeting somewhere, sometime. Desperate people fighting addiction, hungry for human connection and meaning. They call it Thirteenth-Stepping to scam on chicks at a meeting, and the thought of a vampire hunting here... it made me think of hyenas and wildebeest carcasses. I chewed mints from my little tin, and ate a doughnut and drank coffee to blend in. They don’t let you smoke during meetings anymore, so said the little skinny guy sitting next to me. When the vampire came in, I saw the signs, but here it was really weird. Instead of smoothing their hair and checking their breath by huffing against a cupped palm, the addicts got really into the recovery process. When they got up to speak, they seemed inspired – the room was suddenly alive, and people were nodding and murmuring agreement. The confessions rolled free, and there was poetry in the junkies’ mouths. I caught a glimpse of the vampire in the back, nodding her head and smiling this huge encouraging smile at the guy speaking. He got choked up and admitted his Dad did stuff to him when he was a kid, and so nothing has ever been right for him. The hugs when it was over were hard and intense, almost hurting. She was talking to that guy when I left, standing really close, just barely touching his chest with her fingertips. I felt like the interloper, the fake. I belonged here less than the vampire. I skulked out so I wouldn’t have to meet anybody’s eyes.
  8. **Fox County Community College** – I was working part time at the community college doing night maintenance, which is what they call janitor work now. It was quiet because there were only a few night classes – mostly continuing ed stuff, GRE for working moms, and some art classes. On a lark I glanced into a figure drawing class and picked up the vibe right off. They were doing nudes, which I thought might raise some eyebrows if the school administration knew about it. The guy in the center was tubby and balding, but he was buck-ass naked, and looked like he was loving it. He had huge wood, and it was like a dowsing rod pointing right at the vampire. She was all cardigan and glasses-on-chain, with paint in her hair and on her fingers. Really average looking, and seemingly middle-aged, but she crackled with that aura I’d come to recognize. I felt it moving through me, making me hot inside my clothes, itching to be naked myself. The room was too humid, and it reeked of lust. The students were all worked up, and they were painting furiously. I’ve got no eye for art, but they looked like they were in the throes of it, possessed by the art. They painted in a frenzy, almost like they were fucking. I nearly dropped my mop and went in to join them but got a handle on myself and blew the hell out of there. All the shit I’d seen, this circle of middle-age wannabe artists scared me the most.
  9. **Home Depot at 3 AM** – I didn’t know some home improvement warehouses were open 24 hours. All those times I needed a hammer or a paint sprayer or a new lawnmower in the middle of the night, and I didn’t know. I read online that some guys go to home improvement centers and look for women who have that “where the hell are the pliers?” look on their faces and make a move. A natural fit for a lesbian, too. It seemed like a stretch, but I gave it a week. I trusted I had a pretty good feel for vampires by then, but I didn’t see one until Thursday night, when I’d about decided to ditch. He was slowly cruising the isles, by the washing machines and past new bay windows, a shark gliding through a reef of nail guns. He was the first one I saw that moved like a predator, and the vibe I got off him made me shiver. I got in his way by accident, and he just moved through me, brushing me aside like I meant less than a cardboard cutout of a person. I left fast and called 911 from the parking lot and told the cops a guy was waving a gun around. I described the vampire, and then left. He had this look when he walked past me, and I knew somebody was going to die when he got them where he wanted them. All there was in his face was hunger, and his aura made me want to throw myself down his throat. I never heard what happened, but I hope he got interrupted and didn’t find anyone to kill that night.
  10. **Evening Services at Trinity Baptist United** – This place is huge – one of those immense mega-churches with a stadium-sized sanctuary and massive sound system and Christian jam band backing up the preacher. I grew up a holiday Methodist, and this place defied my brain to understand it. The crowd was really worked up when the preacher started his sermon, and everyone was shouting and answering back, and holding one hand up and swaying. I felt more comfortable at NARCANON. I had the preacher tagged as a vampire from go, but the longer I watched, the more it seemed unlikely. I checked the program from earlier that day, and he did the morning services too, and that alone aced him out. I was leaving when someone recognized me as a visitor, and when the service broke, steered me into a group of newbs and wide-smiling church members talking and being way too familiar. Since the breakdown, I don’t like people being too friendly with me – especially when it seems like they have an ulterior motive. I’d been there before in a bad way, lapping up someone else’s affection. But before I could find an excuse to ditch out, a new guy joined us, and the vibe was unmistakable. He was good looking, I guess, in a really whitebread sort of way. Much taller than me. He shook my hand, and his hand was warm, and his personality leaned out and slapped me over and over in the face while he made eye contact. I’d never been under the influence this directly since the breakdown, right square in the monster’s eye... I just lost it, and snatched my hand away, and I ran. I was glad I kept myself in such good shape. I know I made a scene, but I couldn’t endure the vampire’s presence like that, focused right on me. It made me want it more and I never wanted a man in my life. It made me want to give myself over to it and ride the emotions. I ran from it. I ran from me, but I wasn’t fast enough, and so I instead ran to my car and drove for two hours in a random direction.



**THE VAMPIRE’S CONDITION**

**KNOWNS**

Here are the things I know for sure about being a vampire.

  1. It is sort of like being dead, but not quite. (Mad walked and talked and screwed, but sometimes she was cool and still, like a corpse. Other times, she was hot like she had a fever, but she was always hungry after running hot, and she left me in worse shape. When she was cold, she didn’t really breathe except to talk and to keep up appearances. Her heart didn’t beat. I was pressing my face into her neck once when she lit up, and I felt the flutter in her carotid as her heart crept back to life.)
  2. They drink blood. (I keep repeating this, but it starts and stops here. This is the horror. They’re cannibals, and we get off on them eating us. Mad took from me two or three times a week. Not too much usually. If she’d been pushing herself, she always took more, and I could feel in those moments when she held me that she wouldn’t let me go even if I demanded it, but I never did. It isn’t just hunger, and I too know hunger since the breakdown. There’s something inside them that won’t let them go hungry even if they want to, even if their heart is screaming for it. Mad could have killed me a dozen times, but always pulled back. Just barely)
  3. Reflections and Photos are screwy around them. (This varies a lot. When I first noticed it, I thought it was something about me and my mental state. But, there’s always something obscuring their faces, and their forms. The mirror looks warped, or there’s lens flare, or a toss of the head throws hair in the way, or the face is just… smeared, warped. I think they can force it to clear up if they make an effort – Mad did her makeup in the mirror a couple of times. This is the thing that makes me think that they’re not natural. It isn’t a disease or a virus or DNA or anything. They’re magic. It’s a curse. I look at what Mad visited upon me, and the shambles of my life, and I don’t think the curse was on her really. She was just the… the carrier. The instrument. Vampires are like a curse on humanity, and in their own horrible little way, no more guilty of the atrocities they perpetrate than HIV is guilty of AIDS. It’s just what they bring, and what they do. When I realized this, my childhood faith in God returned with a vengeance, and I hated that motherfucker. I think I still do.)
  4. They sort-of die during the day and avoid the sun. (They just shut down while the sun is out. I don’t know what the sun would actually do to them, but Mad had all the windows in her bedroom covered in taped-up paper grocery bags and heavy blankets hung like curtains, so it must be bad. When they shut down during the day, it might be some kind of natural defense to keep them from doing something stupid like trying to end it all out on the roof. It means they live one long night. They aren’t even aware of the day at all. What would that do to your head? Day and night breaks up time into chunks our bodies and brains had a million years to get used to. Mad never seemed to know what day of the week it was. She had a good sense of yesterday and tomorrow, but it got vague after that. She said once she broke time up into the spaces between showers.)
  5. They have superpowers, but they cost. (Like I said – they’re stronger, faster, and sexier than you or me. But these powers have a price. When I saw Mad off her leash, really pushing herself, she was terrifying – unstoppable. But afterwards, she was pale and sunken – and really, really fucking hungry. Even so, she didn’t ever try and take from me. I don’t know what was going on with her then. It was like the monster inside her was exhausted too and sleeping even though it was thirsty. But looking back on that time, I’m sure someone else paid for her restraint with me. See? She loved me too, and just like my love made me give up my life to her sip by sip, hers for me made her murder other people in my place. In my Observations, the main power I saw and experienced was their influence over people and groups. They play on emotions, and then use words and smiles and all the usual arsenal of human social weaponry, but that vibe they throw off… that strips your defenses, makes the vampire’s casual smile seem like the shining benevolence of a loving god. They’re strong too – so strong, that if they lay hands on you, then you’re done. I felt Mad’s strength when we grappled and screwed, and when she clutched me and cried. I knew she was stronger than me, and if she pushed it, way stronger. She was also so fast, that sometimes I hardly saw her move, she just skipped forward half a dozen paces while I blinked, moving like a stop-motion cartoon. When she did this, or used her strength, it was like something else was moving her body around. She didn’t exert muscles and tendons. Her flesh just moved. It stripped the illusion of humanity more surely than some kind of hideous physical transformation. Scarier than shit, and I hated it when she did that.)



**UNKNOWNS**

Here are the things I don’t know about being a vampire, or I’m not sure about.

  1. How to kill a vampire (I don’t know. I don’t really care. I’m resigned to their existence. I saw too many, all comfortable in their niches and hunting grounds for me to even dream of unseating. They’re an old curse. They’ve always been with us. And yet, nobody has figured it, and publicly outed them. Even today, with the Internet and Blogs and YouTube, the crap online is about pervs (like I thought Mad was) or poser vampires or people who think they’re energy vampires, or a dozen other kinds of self-delusional bullshit. There’s no way I could do anything to stop a legacy like that. No way in hell. And killing them… how could I possibly even begin to attempt that? I read Dracula, but it all seemed too gothic and implausible. Mad had a Midwestern accent, and dressed a little trashy or a little sloppy. Big D’s inbred nobility was as alien as the scary, ugly, silent Nosferatu. I don’t know why they had the vampire looking like a hairless albino rat corpse. Some kind of visual metaphor? He would never last in Chicago looking like that. Nobody would sleep with him, even if he had the vampire charm-vibe jacked out the ass. So I don’t know how to kill them, how they die, or anything. I don’t care.)
  2. What vampire community is like (is ten people in the same city with the same weird condition a “community”? The ones I saw all seemed to have their own territory and hunting grounds. I never saw them congregate, or perhaps I just missed them when I focused on the one laying down the most whammy. Mad made out like there were others, and they acted like a family. She talked about her Dad and brother, and I met her little sister. She mentioned ‘cousins’ occasionally. Once, she made out like there was some kind of authority – a “THEY” out there, threatening retribution for certain infractions.)
  3. How a person becomes a vampire (if it was like in the movies, and just getting bitten was enough, then I’d be one too. They might even breed like people, but the thought of vampire babies sucking blood from their mothers’ breasts makes me nauseous, so I’m not going to think about it anymore. It was one mystery among many, and it never entered into the sphere of my relationship with Mad. Perhaps it had something to do with her leaving. Perhaps she spared me her condition. I like to think it is something like that, because it makes it all so romantic, and it makes me a real lover and not a Styrofoam cup filled with her tasty beverage of choice. I know she played me and seduced me, but there were times when she was stripped bare, and I knew she felt something, and I knew that it made everything fucked up for her too. So, I hope that is the reason I don’t know the answer to this one. I hope it is because she loved me.)
  4. What their existence really means (It’s something I’ve thought about and tried to deal with because now my existence and my meaning owes pretty much everything to them. Everything I do is to further my observations and understanding. I’m defined by it now. But what about them? They’re magical. They don’t obey the rules. Physics, biology, chemistry… how do you reason some kind of meaning from something that kicks the ass out of reason? I believe in God now, but I think he’s evil. The God of the Earth is bloated fat on our misery, and perhaps the vampires are his mouths. His hungry mouths which walk among us, and sup our blood, and through them feed him up fat and terrible. Could there be a better Earthly origin for stories of angels and demons? They’re worse than some boogieman out beyond the firelight. They’re in our living rooms, sitting across the coffee table from us. They’re in our bedrooms, fucking our brains out. They’re dancing with us at our favorite clubs. And we invited them in. We smiled and gave them a seat. We undressed when they licked their lips. They’re right there with us as we do all the things that matter for a human being to do, distracting, seducing, rendering all our dreams and aspirations fruitless and barren, and they do it by subverting our most basic urges to breed and procreate and to possess beautiful people, and hold them close. It is such a human horror they bring, that hunger...it only wakens in a vampire, but that appetite is with everyone waiting to find something to tempt it. If they prove anything, it is that God is cruel and hungry, and he hates us all.)



**TEN WAYS TO EXPLAIN THE SYMPTOMS OF BLOOD LOSS AND THE OTHER SIGNS A VAMPIRE IS FUCKING UP YOUR LIFE**

When your secret vampire girlfriend regularly leaves you a few pints shy of full, you have to come up with some explanations for the dizziness and fatigue and headaches and listlessness and chills so bad you feel like you can never be warm again. There’s also your foul temper, which is in part because you’re not sleeping enough (because you’re out fucking your vampire lover, who keeps odd hours, and also because the stress of keeping it all secret is making your stomach burn). I had to lie to Sophie, and she heard most of these.

  1. Sick (This one is so easy, because chronic anemia has lots of symptoms. I thought about going and getting diagnosed with real anemia, but I didn’t want to take that bet. It would mean being examined and tested, and on some level, I was terrified they’d be able to detect Mad on me somehow. Something in my blood. It made me wonder if what she had was contagious, and I didn’t want to think about that.)
  2. Drunk (Mitchell helped me out whenever he could by seeing that I got properly shitfaced. I could then splash myself with booze, and Sophie would assume my stumbling and bloodshot eyes had the prosaic explanation. She hated it when I came home drunk, but it was a normal comfortable kind of hate. It wasn’t break-up hate. She be pissed, then I’d be contrite, and then she’d be forgiving, and then I’d do something else.)
  3. Hung-Over (This one hardly rates its own entry. See “Drunk”. Hung-over gets you less sympathy, because the general consensus is “You had it coming, asshole.” But Do we really need to add this to the collection? We get it. Her life turned to shit. Moving on. Considering what it excused, I would happily deal with Sophie’s contempt instead of her horror and shame and disgust.)
  4. Over-Medicated (How ironic. Sophie was after me to see someone about my depression when I started to just puppet my way through a day, so I finally relented and went to see my doctor. I told him I was feeling depressed, and he gave me script for three different drugs. He said, “Try each one for a month, and then use the one that works the best.” We were friends, and I regularly lost golf to him. I hit on the idea to blame the drugs for anything weird about how I was acting. Since a couple of them killed libido, they gave me an excuse for avoiding sex with Sophie. I would have kept using this one, but Sophie found the unfilled prescriptions in my coat pocket while looking for a tissue. She’d been crying, which come to think, she did fairly often. I had to hem and haw about it after that, and it became a sore subject, so I didn’t try and claim it as an excuse anymore.)
  5. Bad Day At Work (When I started fucking around at work, and making bad decisions, I had a few of these for real. Tom would come into my office and ream me a new one for fucking up some deal or account. I’d go home, and be a bitch all night, and generally mope and be miserable. I liked to play the confident woman, but I craved approval. Anybody who says they don’t care what other people think is a liar or a psychopath. I used this one occasionally when I had to “work late” or something. Sophie bought it a few times, and then it became one of those excuses that she’d accept but wouldn’t believe anymore.)
  6. Got Mugged (I only used this once, because it hurt like hell. I’d really started to run out of excuses at work and home, and my boss thought I was a junkie, or something based on my absenteeism and haggard appearance. He wouldn’t have given a shit if my numbers stayed up, but they’d begun to slip too. That night, Mad and I went a second time, there in the hall in front of the door. I don’t know where I found the energy, but when she kissed me goodbye, I was wet like a jellyfish, and pushing her back against the wall. She got into it a little too much, and left me swaying when we’d blown our wads, her glowing and pink, me pale and distracted by the sparklies in front of my eyes. I asked her what excuse I should give, and she said I looked like someone had hit me in the head, and so I said I could have been mugged, and she said I didn’t look beaten up enough for mugged, and I said that she should hit me. She laughed, and then when I insisted, laughed harder. She kept pulling back to punch me, and I kept flinching at the last second, and she’d crack up laughing. Finally, I said it was a bad idea anyhow, and when I was starting to turn to go, she belted me in the right eye, and knocked me down. When I got done cursing and she got done apologizing, I kissed her one more time and left. When I made the mugging claim at work, Mitchell said, “I heard of pussy-whipped, but pussy-beat-to-shit?”)
  7. Cancer (I feel bad about this one. My Dad was in town for a convention, and we had lunch. He’s got a nose for bullshit after 30 years on the job. I was trying hard not to out and out lie to him, but he could sense all kinds of wrong, bad shit in my life just by how I was evading his questions, or glossing over obvious problems (like one of my credit cards being bounced when I tried to pick up the tab). When I walked him back to his hotel, he out and out asked me what was wrong, and I was so mad at the way he picked me apart – just like he always did – that I told him I had lymphoma. Mad and I had stayed up all night alternately screwing and watching Jerry Springer reruns, and I was thinking about the segment about husbands who left their cancer-ridden wives for younger (and presumably less cancerous) women. So, I told him, and his face went white. I regretted it immediately, but I’d found the perfect way to lie to my father. All I had to do was to admit the worst case he’d already imagined was true, and he’d believe it with fatalistic fervor. Since the breakdown I haven’t talked to him. I wonder sometimes if he thinks I died of the imaginary cancer.)
  8. I gave blood today (Yeah, I used this three times in the same week. I said there was a blood drive at work, and we were competing with the tools from Rinegold Associates to see who could give the most in a week. It was great while it remained plausible. Giving blood till I swayed was something I might have done before all this started, when I still cared about competition and winning and dominating others. It’s funny, my life has turned into a shell, but I found some peace in the emptiness. It’s peaceful, not really giving a shit about anything.)
  9. I’m Fine (If you say this loud enough and angry enough, people leave you the fuck alone even if they can see clearly that it’s an obvious lie. If you get righteously pissed when they pry, it makes them feel like they’re pushing too hard, and perhaps you have some heavy burden crushing you slowly. It isn’t really an excuse, but it buys time to come up with one. You can segue into the excuse by getting a thoughtful, wounded look on your face, and then saying “I had a bad day at work…” or something. When I started playing the indignant broody girl, I felt like a miserable fake, but I’d learned some things from Mad I suppose. I knew that people who loved you wanted desperately to believe you loved them back, and they don’t really want to hear an answer like, “You want to know what’s wrong? I’m not in love with you and I’ve been fucking the undead for a month.”)
  10. Death in the Family (This one was great, and just came to me. I’d “worked late” again, and Sophie was waiting up for me, and she was pissed. She was going to force some kind of confrontation, because she opened with “Where the hell have you been?” and the answer just came to me, like the Devil whispered it in my ear. I said, “Dad called me… my Mom died last night.” It shut her down. Hard. She went from furious and righteous to sympathetic and guilty at being furious with me, and I secretly enjoyed seeing her twirl around and around on the hook she’d swallowed. That made me hate myself a little, because it was something Mad would have done. But Sophie left me alone for a week, and when I seemed really used-up and pale, she assumed I’d just been crying privately, because my butchy grief was too raw to share. I took the weekend and told her I was flying down to Charlotte for the funeral. She drove me to the airport. I kissed her on the curb. She left. Then Mad picked me up in her old Volvo, and we spent the weekend fucking like animals. When I ‘came home’, Sophie thought I looked so worn down because I had to be strong for my Dad and sister. I think seeing her look at me then was the only time in this whole fucking mess I ever seriously considered killing myself.)




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